Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how scholars have been shaped by assumptions about the nature of the individual as a rights-bearing subject in the modern state. How might such an exploration unlock other possibilities for research on the politics of the psyche, focusing on the process of stigmatization?

Paper long abstract:

Freud watched Europe devolve into racist, anti-Semitic discourse that culminated in the utter dehumanization of the Jew and developed psychoanalytic theory against this backdrop, offering a model of the psyche that could explain how people could get caught up in this irrationality. Yet within the context of postwar secular democracies, psychoanalytic practice, like religion, came to be seen as an apolitical pursuit of individuals within their private lives. Religion has subsequently burst the bounds of privacy and the separation of church and state to become a major political force, but the psyche has been shier, demonstrating a reticence reinforced by the state through regulations such as HIPAA and IRBs, regulations that play a powerful role in shaping research agendas in psychoanalysis and psychological anthropology. In this paper, I explore how scholars have been shaped by assumptions about the nature of the individual as a rights-bearing subject in the modern state and how such an exploration might unlock other possibilities for research on the politics of the psyche, with a particular focus on the process of stigmatization.